


Back-Up

by rosa_himmelblau



Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:41:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24549304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Vinnie has a job he needs help with.Roger isn't sure what that job is.





	Back-Up

Roger watched as Vince ran the sponge mop up and down the living room wall. In the dim light, it was hard to tell just how much progress—if any—he was making, removing the offending paint.

"Why don't you just paint over it?"

"Because I don't want to paint the room black, and nothing else's really going to cover it," Vinnie answered. "As it is, I'll probably have to go with a darker color than I really want." He turned to wring the dirty water out, rewet the mop, then frowned at Roger. "Why're you just standing there?"

Roger knew what he meant, but he shrugged. "No place to sit down. Your furniture's gone."

"I know my fucking furniture's gone," Vinnie snapped. "I didn't ask you here to sit around and eat bon-bons."

"There are bon-bons?" Roger asked. Sometimes it was fun to push Vince, just to see how close he could get him to the edge without pushing him over. And this time he even had an excuse. Right now, he was reasonably irritated, not irrationally angry.

"No," Vinnie said. "There's liverwurst sandwiches, coleslaw, a couple of candy bars, and beer, but that's for later. For right now, there's trash bags. Start picking up this shit."

Roger looked around the room. "I remember dates with you being more fun than this."

Vince, back to mopping the wall, didn’t even bother to look at him. "We starting this again, Spanky? I told you, I'm used to better. Unless you start buying me pretty things, we'll never be more than just good friends." There was laughter in his voice.

Roger unrolled a trash bag, not saying anything. This was a game he couldn't win because Vince was always willing to go nuclear with his responses because—at least with Roger—he didn't embarrass where sex was concerned. He started stuffing the bag with fast food detritus.

Roger finished the living room before it was too dark to see anything. Not that there was anything to see; all the furniture in the house had been removed. Except for the trash, and the tools for cleaning, there was nothing but a cooler and a couple of camp stools in a corner. Vince had told him there were sleeping bags in his bedroom.

The electricity was off, so there was neither light nor heat. The heat was no issue; the last thing they needed on this July night was more heat. But the water was on, so the toilets worked. Vince had told him all this when he called him, but he didn't explain any of it. Roger had been waiting, but instead, Vince had put him to work.

Having finished his assigned chore, Roger made himself as comfortable as possible on one of the camp stools. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

"We're cleaning up my house," Vince said shortly. Again he wrung out the mop and refreshed the water in it.

"Yeah, but even you were a better housekeeper than this. And you haven't exactly been home a lot." Vince laughed shortly at this understatement. "And maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't you used to have some furniture?" When Vince didn't answer this admittedly rhetorical question, Roger put it more bluntly. "So, what happened?"

"I came home to it like this." He stopped mopping midstroke, turned, and tossed the mop on the floor. "I guess Rudy's name doesn't carry the kind'a juice it used to, especially not with him all the way out in roadrunner country." He dragged over the cooler and sat down on the other camp stood. "You want a beer?"

"Sure."

Vince handed him a can, took one for himself. They popped the tabs and drank. "People have been camping out here."

As revelations went, this wasn't one. Roger had worked out for himself that Vince hadn't made this mess. "And?"

"And, I'm cleaning it up." Vince drank some more.

"And you called me to help."

"Not for the clean-up," Vince said. "I called you for other help. The clean-up's just a bonus."

"A bonus for who, you or me?"

"The clean-up's the admission fee you gotta pay for what's going to happen later tonight."

Roger fluttered his hand against his chest. "Be still my heart. What's going to happen later?"

"You see how undamaged the place is? Some paint on the walls, trash all around, but that's it, no serious vandalism. 'Course, I don't got copper pipes, so there'd be no reason to take those. But it doesn't look much like a squat."

Roger looked around, but with only street light to illuminate it, the room remained stubbornly dark. But it wasn't like he didn't remember what it had looked like a couple of hours ago. "Yeah, you're right. What's going on?"

"What's going on is, this place is being protected and rented out. We're going to be here when tonight's traffic arrives and they're going to tell us who the money's going to."

Roger smiled. "That's why you told me to be prepared."

The liverwurst sandwiches were gone, and Roger was finishing up the coleslaw. Vinnie was on his third beer. He'd eaten both of the candy bars.

"I'm all right," Vinnie said, more aggressively than that statement was usually made.

"I didn't ask," Roger said.

"No, but you were going to. I'm all right, I'm just not very happy right now."

"You mean because you've got trespassers to deal with?" Roger asked.

"Yeah, that too. But just generally. I know I'm supposed to be, I got home safe, against all odds. But I'm not, I'm pissed off, and everybody acts like I got no business being pissed because I should be grateful. Which I am. But I'm still pissed."

Roger opened his duffle and took out one of the H&Ks he'd brought. "I dunno what you're supposed to be grateful for. You got taken out of your own home, held against your will, threatened and I'm assuming more. That sounds like one of those 'it could've been worse' things." He paused, then added, "I hate those things."

"Me too. So, I'm not grateful and I'm in a lousy mood. I'll get over it. But now I got these mezzamooks coming in here when I just wanted to come home and be left alone. So I need to get rid of 'em."

"And you need my help to do that," Roger said. Since it didn't seem likely the trespassers were particularly dangerous, Vinnie needing his help didn't seem all that likely either.

"Nah, I can take care of that. They're not gonna be any trouble."

"Then what am I here for?" Roger asked.

"Two things. I need somebody here if they give me any backtalk."

"You don't think you can handle backtalk?" That didn't seem likely either. "Since when? You afraid you'll cry?"

"Yeah, Rog, I'm scared of getting my feelings hurt." He rummaged in the cooler, pulled out another beer, and wiped it on his T-shirt before popping the tab. "I am afraid. I'm I afraid I might kill one or more of them. And I don't want to. So you're here to make sure I don't."

Roger got the slightest chill. He knew there had been a change, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Now it was standing here with a spotlight on it. "What if I want to?" he asked, not exactly to lighten the mood.

Vince shrugged and drank some beer. "That's on you, but not in my house. But I'll help you bury the bodies."

Could be that was a joke. Or not. Roger decided not to try to find out. "What's the other thing?"

"Once we find out who's been renting out my house without my permission, we're going after 'em."

They cleaned their guns.

Sort of.

Sitting on their rolled up sleeping bags in Vinnie's old bedroom, they disassembled their guns in the dark and gave the parts a good going over with an old T-shirt Roger had cut up for just such an activity. Roger's gun was already clean; he was struggling to remember the last time he'd fired it. Target practice at a range in Montana, maybe, but that was only a guess. Definitely target practice, though. He hadn't shot at anything living in a while now.

And Vince's gun was just as clean. Roger knew that because he'd brought it for him, an H&K USP .45. But disassembling them, polishing the parts, then reassembling them was something to do with your hands, and there was a feeling of satisfaction that came when you slapped the clip back in place.

"Why am I doing this?" Roger asked, not expecting any real answer.

"I dunno," Vince said. "It's cheaper than smoking."

"No, I mean, why am I here?"

"I told you," Vince began, but Roger interrupted him.

"No, why did you call me?"

Vince stopped what he was doing and gave Roger his full attention. "Because you owe me."

"For what? What do I owe you for?"

Now Vinnie grinned at him, and maybe it was Roger's imagination, but he thought he could see his eyes sparkling. "I dunno, Rog, you tell me. I called you, said I needed you for an operation, promised you it didn't involve Frank, and said you owed me. And you showed up. If you don't owe me, how come you showed up?"

"So, you played me," Roger said, and he wasn't angry. Well, he wasn't exactly angry.

"I think **you** played you. How come you didn't ask me this over the phone? Or ask yourself? You wait until you're actually here to start asking questions?" This last was said mockingly, and Vince laughed. At him.

Yeah.

"Besides, how many former mercenary friends do you think I got?"

"I was not a mercenary," Roger said with forced patience because he wasn't going to get angry.

Vince shrugged. "You played one on TV, so close enough. And I thought you'd enjoy it. The only other guy I know who'd like to brace some wannabe is dead—really, you-can-break-into- **his** -house-'cause-he-won't-care dead, so you're up. You want to cut out, you know where the door is."

He was, Roger realized, trying too hard not to feel anything because feeling anything at all was feeling too much. How he talked about Steelgrave—if he talked about him, and he usually did when his feelings were too close to the surface—was a very good barometer. Roger had been there himself, but he didn't have a barometer.

They went back to not exactly cleaning their guns.

"You think you'll get your furniture back?" Roger asked idly. Their guns were as clean as they could get. The beer was gone and they were now sipping water out of a couple of plastic bottles.

"Except for the stereo and the sofa, it's not my furniture," Vinnie said.

"Your mother's furniture, then," Roger said, letting himself sound annoyed because Vince was nitpicking.

"It's not her furniture either," Vince said, and he sounded annoyed too. "It's Tito Armini's furniture, and I could care less if I ever see it again."

Roger frowned into the darkness. "Who's Tito Armini and why was his furniture in your house?"

Vince sighed, took a drink of his water, sighed again. "Tito Armini is my step-uncle."

Roger parsed that. Vince's step-uncle, that made him Rudy Aiuppo's brother. "Why was his furniture in your house?"

"Didn't I tell you about Rudy getting deported?"

"Don't think so."

"Mm. OK, here's the Bicentennial minute version, so try to keep up. My mother got engaged to Rudy and I was disgruntled about it."

Roger was pretty sure he'd never heard anybody else describe themselves as disgruntled before.

"I was complaining about it and one of the agents I work with did me a favor. He checked on Rudy's immigration status and found out he was in the country illegally. That triggered deportation proceedings." Vinnie sighed again, drank again, sighed another time. "Only my ma was happy and . . . ." Another sigh. "So, anyway, there was this plan, whereby Rudy and Tito would switch places, Tito'd get a free trip back to Italy, Rudy'd stay here and pretend to be Tito, and they'd all live happily ever after."

"And nobody'd be the wiser?" Roger asked.

"Oh, hell, no, everybody was the wiser! The whole neighborhood knew! Half the Bureau knew! Anybody with half a brain knew! But it was all some charming, romantic story, so they let it slide. Ma and Rudy went on their honeymoon, and while they were gone, we moved her furniture to Tito's house, where she and Rudy would be living, and what we didn't get rid of of Tito's, we put in my place. So, whoever this budding entrepreneur is, he stole Tito Armini's furniture, and good riddance. But that doesn't mean he's not gonna pay."

It was, by Roger's illuminated dial, almost two when Vinnie's unwelcome tenants returned. They'd been having a soft, desultory conversation about Helen Getzloff's cancer, along the lines of how could a cancer get cancer, and wasn't there any such thing as professional courtesy, when Roger heard something. "Sh."

Vince sh'ed. They listened.

There was giggling, and at first Roger thought it was a boy and girl. But as they stumbled down the hall toward the master bedroom, Roger realized it was the voices of two boys he heard, but young enough those voices hadn't fully deepened.

In the dark, Vinnie's eyes met his, and Vinnie sagged. "I feel bad about this," he whispered. "But I don't wanna listen to 'em fuck, and I'm not waiting another night like this." He got gracelessly—but soundlessly—to his feet and shook one leg. Roger assumed this was because that leg was asleep and not because he'd had a sudden urge to do the Hokey Pokey. He got up too.

The boys had made it to the big bedroom. They'd brought their own sleeping bags and cooler, but when Roger caught sight of them, they were standing in a corner, kissing. Vince sighed yet again.

Then he turned on the high-power flashlight he'd brought.

Both boys turned to face the beam, hands up. "We didn't take nothin'!" one of them announced.

The other just said "Oh, god," in a despairing voice.

"There's nothing to take," Vince answered, exasperated. "Frisk 'em," he told Roger.

Roger did, emptying their pockets of keys and wallets, cigarettes and lighters, and in the case of the one who didn't take nothin', a pocket knife. He had gone silent after his initial proclamation of innocence. The other one just kept saying oh, god, in ever more despairing tones.

"You want to go through their wallets?" Roger asked.

"What for? Give 'em back, but not the keys. Not yet."

Roger, who liked to know the names of the people he was dealing with, looked at their IDs before he gave back the wallets.

"Who are you guys?" the first kid, Claude Malman asked. David Wyrozub was the one who kept saying, oh, god. They were both sixteen, their drivers licenses still shiny and new.

Vinnie handed Roger the flashlight and used its light to look at the keys. "Go see if this one fits the front door," he said, picking out a key not affiliated with any of the others.

"You can't do that!" Claude said. He had a confrontational air and angry dark eyes. If it weren't for the guns, he'd be striking out.

David wasn't crying, but he wanted to. He kept rubbing his nose and mouth, mangling his oh, gods.

"You go," Roger said. "I'll keep an eye on Bonnie and Clyde."

"Who're you calling Bonnie?" Claude exploded. "I ain't no fag!"

"Right, kid," Roger said dismissively. He could hear Vinnie, heading towards the door, laughing.

"Are you the police?" David seemed to have drawn some strength from his friend's outburst and had come up with something different to say.

"No, but we have guns," Roger said conversationally. "So just pretend we are and things will turn out better for you."

"Yeah," Claude Malman sneered. "Guns. See how tough you are without those guns! I'd wipe the floor with you both!"

"My friend was Golden Gloves middleweight champion not so many years ago," Roger lied. "You don't want to mess with him."

"Old men," Claude further sneered. "You don't scare me!"

David snuffled, then added, "Yeah!" in a supportive way. True love, Roger thought.

"Yeah, it's the right key," Vince called from the living room. "Give 'em their stuff back."

"Who are you guys?" Claude asked again. "You can't just take our stuff!"

"We're not taking your stuff," Roger said patiently, returning their keys to their pockets. "We're taking what's not your stuff, which is the key to this house which is not your house."

"It's not yours either," David flared. "Carl's gonna be mad if we don't give him back the key."

"Carl who?" Vinnie asked, coming back into the room.

David and Claude looked at each other.

"You guys know who Rudy Aiuppo is?" Vinnie asked, and everything about him, his voice, his posture, the look on his face that Roger couldn't even see, said he was a hair's breadth from knocking one or both of them down as he played Rudy Aiuppo's stepson.

"Yeah, sure, another old guy," Claude sneered some more.

Vinnie, unexpectedly, laughed at that. "How about Brandon Castellano? You know him?"

David and Claude looked at each other again. "Maybe," David said. "Why?"

Roger knew where he was going and took up the story. "You remember when some guy beat the hell out of him just a few blocks from here, broke his jaw, put him in the hospital?"

No response from David and Claude, so Roger went on, nodding at Vinnie "I told you, he was Golden Gloves middleweight champion."

They were shaking their heads. "Huh-uh, no, that guy's dead," David said.

"Get out of my house," Vinnie said, apparently having forgotten about Carl.

Roger hadn't. "After you tell us this Carl's last name and where to find him." When neither of them spoke, he added, "Or we can call the police."

"Barsotti," Claude said.

"Yeah, great," Roger said. "Do I just look him up in the phone book?"

The boys exchanged a look. "He'll know it was us," David said in a small voice while Claude said nothing. "He'll know it was us," he repeated, as though Roger might not have fully understood.

Roger wanted to say something, one of those things cops said, about how they'd be protected, or that once he and Vince found Barsotti, they'd be safe. Neither of those things were true.

He didn't have to say anything because Vince said, "Yeah, he'll know, of course he'll know. But you got my word it won't come back on you."

"Your word?" It was David, not Claude, who spat these two scornful words. "Oh, your word. Why the fuck didn't you say so?"

Vinnie grinned. His bearing changed, his stance became the arrogant, don't-fuck-with-me one Roger remembered from Stockton. "Yeah, my word. I took down Sonny Steelgrave when he was at the top in Atlantic City. I took down Albert Cerrico and left the whole Commission in chaos. And you wouldn't know his name, but I took down Mel Proffit, who could have bought and sold both of those guys with petty cash. You think I can't protect you from some Carl Barsotti?" Vinnie's own scorn saw David's and raised it. "Now tell us where to find him."

After a moment of somehow dreadful silence, Claude said, "At the library."

"The library?" Roger asked on an involuntary laugh of surprise.

"Yeah, what, you think we can't read or somethin'?" Claude snarled at him. He was making up for showing he was afraid of Carl. "At the library, they gotta let you in, our taxes pay for it."

Vinnie was laughing again, though Roger wasn't sure at what exactly. And under his breath, he muttered, "Taxes, man, taxes."

"The library," Roger repeated, shaking his head. "Thanks for the civics lesson. Let me escort you to the door."

Vince didn't come with them. At the door, David said, "We know that guy's dead, the one who lived here. So who are you guys really?"

"We're the super posse," Roger said.

Vinnie must have heard him, because in the bedroom, he laughed again and called out, "You tell 'em, Butch!"

Roger gave the kids a gentle push out the door and closed and locked it.

When he turned around, he saw that Vince had come back to the living room and was looking out the window, watching the boys trudge away. "Fuck," he muttered and hurried back to the bedroom, returning almost immediately with the sleeping bags and cooler. He opened the door and put them at the bottom of the stoop, then said, "You forgot something." In the quiet of the late night, there was no need to raise his voice.

The boys turned, saw their stuff, but didn't make a move back for it. They were like feral cats who wouldn't eat while the dangerous human was nearby. Vince came back into the house and shut the door, not looking to see what they did.

"The library," Roger said. He was still puzzling that one out.

"He's dealing with kids. He might be a kid himself. Thing is, you can't service a clientele that can't access you," Vince said. "If his clientele's kids, he needs to be someplace they can go where he won't look suspicious. So, he hangs out in and around the library."

"He doesn't look suspicious in a library?" Roger asked.

"You were ensconced in private schools with their own libraries," Vinnie said. He had seated himself back on the camp stool to put his shoes back on. "Public libraries are different. A lotta people go there just to get in out of the cold, and if you got a book open, you can't even be accused of loitering or vagrancy. The only rules they got are about not being loud and no food and no sleeping. And you can't stink too bad. And I grew up with guys like Carl, budding entrepreneurs." Again properly shod, he stood up. "Come on."

"Where are we going? I know this is the city that never sleeps, but the library must be closed at—" he checked his watch "—quarter of three."

"You're thinking of Manhattan," Vinnie said. "Here in Brooklyn, our libraries close at nine. But it's a warm night, and libraries got steps and sometimes even benches. And I bet this Carl's the kind who stays up all night. You know," he added, "I wasn't a Golden Gloves champion."

"Yeah, but I wasn't going to tell those two you were just some mook who liked to get punched in his spare time. I wanted to make you sound dangerous, not stupid." Following as Vinnie walked out the front door, he added, "Turns out, you did a pretty good job of doing that all by yourself."

Vinnie was right, it was a fine night to loiter on the steps of a small public library. The oppressive heat had lifted and the short walk to the library on 4th Street had been pleasant. Roger had forgotten how nice it could be, just walking in the cool night air.

As they approached the library, he saw there were three teenage girls in very little clothes—they caught the eye immediately in their bright colors and bright jewelry and bright, shiny hair.

Less noticeable were the half dozen boys. They were dressed to fade into the darkness, their colors dark, their heads covered with dark baseball caps. Roger could tell with one look they were ready to cause trouble at a moment's notice.

He was about to ask Vinnie what the play was when Vinnie yelled, "Which one of you is Carl Barsotti?"

"Who wants to know?" was the predictable response from one of the boys. The girls giggled.

"I got business with him," Vinnie answered. He stopped about two yards from the group, very obviously sizing them all up.

"Yeah? And who're you?" The same voice asked.

Vinnie said nothing, and Roger realized this was part of his job. "You never heard of Vinnie Terranova?"

"I heard of him," one of the boys said. "I heard he's dead!" The whole group laughed at this sparkling witticism.

"I never met the guy, did he come back from the grave just to see me?" a skinny blondish boy who must have been Carl asked, and got an even bigger laugh.

"You're the man, Carl!" One of the boys enthused. "They come back from the dead just to do a deal with you!"

Vinnie was smiling, patient, waiting for the laughter to subside, but he was also doing what Roger himself was doing: assessing the various positions of the boys, checking for weapons, weighing just how involved the girls were willing to get, if things got ugly.

The laughter had died down. Into the relative quiet, Vinnie said, "Carl Barsotti stole my mother's furniture. He's been renting out my house. He owes me money and he owes me an apology."

Carl separated himself from the group and swaggered up to Vinnie. "Just who are you?"

"Vinnnie Terranova. You want to see my ID?" And before Carl could answer, Vinnie had punched him in the nose.

There was a collective gasp from the onlookers. Roger brought out his gun to keep them from surging into the fray, not bothering to point it. There really wasn't a fray to surge into, since Carl had gone down, his nose spurting blood.

Vince was taking deep, calming breaths. "Where's my mother's furniture?"

"Old Man Jacobson, he took it off my hands," Carl said, wisely still on the ground. Wisely because then he added, "Hardly got nothin' for it, it was a lot of junk."

"Rog, Carl here fell down. Help him up, would you?" Vince said. He wasn't working on staying calm anymore. He'd moved into dedicated smartass mode.

"Come on, take it like a man," Roger said, and with the hand he wasn't using to hold the gun, he pulled Carl to his feet.

In a second, Carl was down again from a punch to the gut. "Get his wallet," Vince said.

"Mugging teenagers," Roger muttered. "This isn't the night you promised me."

"Later we'll come back and rough up a librarian," Vinnie responded. "That's more your speed, right?" He took the wallet from Roger, opened it, and removed the cash. Carl wasn't saying anything; he was still trying to catch his breath. But his friends, particularly the girls, were protesting loudly.

"You want to steal from the dead, you better make damn sure they are dead!" Vinnie yelled at them. "Rog, get him up again."

"No!" Carl gasped. "No, I'm sorry, no—"

"I'm not gonna hit you anymore," Vince said, and when Carl was on his feet, he put out his hand, palm up. "Gimme the keys."

"I don't got—" Carl began.

Roger, who was holding him by his collar, gave him a little shake. "Hand 'em over, kid."

"You won't get away with this," he muttered, and pulled three loose house keys from his pocket and put them in Vinnie's hand.

"Yeah? Is Brandon Castellano still the big juice around here?"

There had been muttering from the group. Now there was silence.

"Or is it Michael Brod? Who's the big fish in your little pond?"

"You don't know those guys," someone from the peanut gallery piped up.

"Know those guys?" Roger said. "Who do you think put Castellano in the hospital with a concussion and a broken jaw a few years back?"

"But that guy's dead," another peanut objected.

"I'm not dead!" Vinnie hollered. Then, more quietly to Roger, "Do you ever have this much trouble convincing people you aren't dead?"

"No, but I want them to think I'm dead, so I'm not really in the same position." He let go of Carl, who managed to stay upright on his own.

"Any of you come near my house again, you'll get worse than Castellano got. And if anything happens to Malman or Wyrozub—"

"Those fags sold me out!" Carl had only now come to this realization.

"He's going far in this world," Roger said, and Vince laughed.

"They had about as much choice as you did," Vinnie said. "You leave 'em alone, or I'll go to Brod and tell him all about how you've been making money in his territory, but you haven't been kicking any of it up. And he won't care when you tell him I took that money off you, he'll still want his cut. And then some."

Even in the dim light coming from the library's porch light, Roger could see Carl pale. "Yeah, no, it's OK, they're cool."

"Good. You just remember that. And stay away from my house."

They walked slowly back to Vinnie's house, not talking. Roger wasn't even tired, though it had been years since he'd stayed up all night like this.

"You hungry?" Vinnie asked.

"Yeah," Roger said.

"I know a place that's open all night. The food's not even too bad."

"There's a recommendation," Roger snarked. "Do they have that on the sign out front?"

"They don't even got a sign out front," Vinnie said. "Came down after a big storm a few years back."

"This place I gotta see," Roger said. "What're your plans for later today?"

"We still got a house to clean," Vince said.

"We?" Roger asked. "Are you asking me to move in with you?"

Vince ignored that. "But I was thinking. There's a Marriott not too far from here, nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge. And I bet they've got room service."

"And beds," Roger said. "I'm not some hard-up kid and I'm getting too old for sleeping bags, especially when there's no reason."

"And beds," Vince agreed. "I like beds better myself. C'm'on, we can take the R train." And as they walked down the stairs of the subway station, "We need to be well-rested, because that house needs a bunch'a work."

"You keep saying 'we," Roger said.

"Yeah, you an' me."

He waited until they'd reached the platform for the R train before answering. He took Vince by the shoulders and pushed him against a support pole, then stepped up to him until their bodies were just touching. "If you're looking for somebody to clean your house and put up with your shit and go happily off to bed alone, you should have called Frank." The smile Vince gave him made Roger wonder if he shouldn't rethink some of his opinions of McPike, but now was not the time for that. "So, forget the pretty things. We come to an understanding right now or I'm off to the airport."

Vinnie grinned at him, said "I was wondering when you were gonna quit treating me like spun glass," and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to clean up my house for an inspection and I was bemoaning just how hard a lot of the work was. A friend and I were saying how nice it would be to have Vinnie to do the heavy lifting.
> 
> Thinking about that was more fun than most of what I was thinking about right then.
> 
> So I wrote it down.


End file.
